


Maybe The Life I Lead Is Killing Me

by skyline



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: Alcoholism, Incest, M/M, Ritual Sacrifice, all character death is canonical, mostly movie-canon warnings, that last one didn't happen in the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:46:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25132609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: “We can’t do this,” Alex continues. “We can’t be this. I can’t – I can’t be this, for you.”“Okay,” he says, even though no part of this is.There is not a single moment of Daniel Le Domas’s life that has ever been okay.
Relationships: Alex Le Domas/Daniel Le Domas, Alex Le Domas/Grace Le Domas
Kudos: 21





	Maybe The Life I Lead Is Killing Me

**Author's Note:**

> I started this after the movie and then sort of...dropped it. Oops. Anyway, tada! I picked it up again.

Fate, once it catches up to you – and it’s gonna – can’t be hidden from, outrun, escaped.

Daniel gets that, even when he’s small.

He learns the alphabet alongside chants and satanic prayers. He slaughters his first goat – a newborn kid, barely up to his knees – at age four. And by the time he hears _that_ song, proceeded by screams, he already knows the taste and the smell and the feel of blood, thick and wet between his fingers.

Alex wants to see, because for Alex, it’s fun and games. The rituals, the sacrifices. The bedtime tales woven through with their terrible, storied history. Alex thinks it’s make-believe.

He hasn’t experienced the creeping sense of dread that burgeons within Daniel, every day, because so far, Daniel won’t let him.

He’s the one who volunteers for the goat shed.

He’s the one who follows up their mom’s batshit horror stories with tamer fairytales.

Daniel knows Alex can’t stay clean forever, but he protects him. Daniel protects Alex because it’s his _job_. It’s what big brothers do.

Then Aunt Helene’s wedding happens, and there’s more blood than even Daniel knows what to do with.

He has to wash it off of the game table after.

His dad says it builds character, but mostly it makes Daniel retch.

And, once the blood is gone, Aunt Helene is locked in her childhood bedroom. She sobs so loudly that Daniel feels it inside of himself, sorrow creeping under his skin, infiltrating his bones, his marrow. It doesn’t matter where he is in the house – her sadness is a specter he can’t ever escape.

Daniel goes back to his room and curls into a tiny ball, trying desperately to keep his dinner down while Alex snores softly beside him.

It gets harder to be a big brother then, to protect Alex when every night henceforth, Daniel crawls into bed weighed down by misery, this ashy coating on his tongue that might also be guilt.

Alex will pile in beside him, wanting his big brother. Reassurance. Protection.

He doesn’t get that things are different now.

In the aftermath of Aunt Helene’s wedding, Daniel no longer remembers how to look at his family, or himself, without hating them. He can’t face his parents or the goat shed, or this mausoleum of a house built on fucking board games.

So, Alex goes to kill his first kid, and Daniel can’t be bothered to care. He can’t work up the willpower to tell his little brother a story, or even to leave his room.

Daniel can’t protect anyone anymore.

* * *

He dates girls and guys in his teens.

They’re mostly people he doesn’t like, because what’s the point? Sex is great, but if he finds someone, truly finds someone, and they want to get married?

It doesn’t end well.

They sell their soul or they die.

Still, he keeps dating people, because he’s young, rich, and hot, and weak willed in the face of nudity.

Also, because it’s _expected_. Heirs need to produce heirs, and all that.

So Daniel fucks around, and doesn’t care much who he hurts.

He gets in trouble at school, starts fights, spreads gossip. He’s got a spot under the bleachers where he gives pliant girls hickeys during homeroom, a place in the locker rooms where he shoves his hands down other boys’ gym shorts.

And when he comes home each afternoon, slick with sweat and the scent of come, he tells Alex about it, about breaking hearts and never caring about the consequences.

It’s fine. It’s okay. It’s Daniel’s life, and it’s not going to change.

He keeps on that way, with the fighting, the fucking. He drinks his first glass of whiskey, and in that amber liquid discovers the only love he’ll ever need.

Everything’s fine. His breath smells like gasoline and kiss marks circle his skin, a necklace of bruises. Everything’s okay.

Everything’s _stagnant_.

Until one day, his little brother, his baby brother, who is teaching sweet, spoiled Emilie to slit an animal’s throat, tells him with a frown, “I wish you would stop that.”

“Wha?” Daniel asks, only half listening.

He’s picking his fingernails with a rusty knife, daring tetanus to take its best shot.

“Screwing randos.” Alex wrinkles his nose, like sex is a bad word. He’s fourteen and a little bit small for his age, but lean all over. Growing up. “You’re better than that.”

Daniel smiles, more grimace than happiness. “With our family? Dude, I’ll never be better than anything. We’re not even a little bit good.”

“Bullshit,” Alex spits, and Emilie gasps, bright-eyed and ready to tattle. “You’re at least a little good. Even if the rest of us aren’t.”

“I’m good,” Emilie whines in protest, while Daniel stares.

“You really think that?”

Sternly, Alex replies, “I _know_ that.”

“I’m good,” Emilie insists. 

And Daniel is compelled to say, “You too, man. At least a little bit.”

Alex beams, and Daniel can’t help it, can’t stop the warmth that floods his chest.

Because here’s the thing:

Daniel doesn’t care much about anyone, anymore, but he still cares about Alex.

That’s something.

That has to be something.

* * *

The worst part is when he allows himself to forget, even for a moment.

When he’s in the broad expanse of the backyard, sunning himself beneath autumn trees, gold and red and green.

Or tucked in the music room the year Alex decides to get a drum set, patiently listening to him annoy the living fuck out of their parents, tone deaf and utterly enthusiastic.

Or after he’s learned to drive, gunning it down an open road with Alex in the passenger seat, music blaring and wind rushing in through open windows. The soft leather of the brand new sports car under his palms, and the crunch of the gravel right before he pushes the gearshift into park.

Then there’s the thin circle of Alex’s arms around his broadening shoulders, the quick flash of a dimple before he trots up the steps toward the gaping maw of their house.

Daniel can forget, just then, until he can’t.

His knuckles, wrapped around that steering wheel, are stained with blood.

Just because no one else can see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

* * *

Daniel’s hungover more often than he’s not, and he wakes up sprawled across thirty thousand dollar chaises with an old family quilt draped carefully across his shoulders, Tylenol and a glass of water sitting nearby.

He tells Alex, “It’s not your job to take care of me.”

Alex shrugs. “Who else will?”

He doesn’t have an answer for that.

* * *

Family is a burden. A noose around Daniel’s neck.

There’s no way to shake them, to shuck off the shackles of his mother’s love, or his father’s fierce pride. Even if Daniel can’t muster up a single iota of feeling for his parents, or his sister, or his crazy ass aunt…he chooses them. Every time.

He defends them to his friends, to his teachers. To naysayers in the street, and he doesn’t even know why.

What’s a casual insult to someone who is as dead inside as Daniel Le Domas?

Besides, it’s been a long time since he liked his family.

The feeling might even be mutual.

Daniel’s got a hunch his parents are planning to write him out of their wills, gift everything to Alex instead, but that might be wishful thinking. Because he wants it, oh, how he wants that.

He would give everything up, if he could. He would flush their bank accounts down the drain, dump every stock and safe full of heirlooms. He’d give away the trust funds, the prestige. The name recognition and the impending Ivy League education. He’d live in a cardboard box and never have to kill another living being ever again, not one more time in his entire freaking life.

What a daydream.

Even if he did all that, and it wouldn’t make a fig of difference.

Luck follows the Le Domas kin all across the globe. Daniel finds hundred dollar bills in crosswalks. He goes on accidental dates with models. No matter where he disappears to, or how far he runs, the devil’s got a hold of him.

Daniel can surrender his parents’ respect, their love, and even his spot in their last will and testaments, but no matter what he does, he’s stuck with this:

His inheritance of vice and gore.

* * *

Alex doesn’t sneak into Daniel’s bed anymore, which Daniel thinks is a damn shame.

He’s in college now – hell, they’re both closer to grown than not, but every time Daniel visits home, he gets lonely in the dark, lonely in the big, canopied bed that belonged to his great, great grandsomething.

He lives alone in the small apartment he’s got in the city – dorms are too plebian for a Le Domas – but he loves it there. The walls are thin, and he can hear his neighbors’ TV, or the murmur of their voices when they’re preparing meals. The guy who lives upstairs plays rock music too loud at four am, and the rumble of cars on the street is always audible.

It’s completely the opposite of their cavernous house, with it’s big, echoing hallways.

Daniel slips out from beneath the sheets, pajama bottoms low on his hips, and staggers tipsily over to Alex’s bedroom.

It’s Christmas vacation, and there’s a tastefully festive wreath on Alex’s door. Daniel tilts it on an angle to annoy his mother, or the butler, or the maids. Whoever sees this small act of anarchy first.

He doesn’t bother knocking, sauntering into Alex’s space like he owns it.

That was probably a mistake.

Alex emerges from his en suite bathroom in a burst of steam, in the middle of wrapping a towel around his waist. The long, pale stretch of his legs disappears beneath fine Turkish knitwork, but not before what’s underneath is branded under Daniel’s eyelids.

Alex glances up and startles, almost dropping the towel. “ _Daniel_!”

His voice breaks in a way it hasn’t in a while, and Daniel licks his lips, trying and failing to tear his gaze away. “Sorry. My bad. I-“

He can’t think up an excuse, mind hazy with liquor, and so he just lifts a shoulder like it’s some kind of explanation instead.

Maybe it is, because Alex softens. “Can’t sleep?”

“Not a wink,” Daniel agrees, distractedly. Drinking his baby brother in, and growing increasingly queasy with every passing second. “The way the wind whistles through this crypt, I’m surprised you ever get a solid eight hours.”

Alex laughs, because Alex has never hated their house the way Daniel does.

Obviously. Alex is the golden son.

He actively appreciates their history, even the parts he doesn’t approve of. He listens when their dad talks about their family tree, and he thinks the family business is _interesting_ and fun. Minus the bloody ritual sacrifice.

Sometimes, Alex tells Daniel that it’s exciting to be a Le Domas, that they’re _part of something_.

What it is Alex thinks they’re a part of, Daniel doesn’t know. He doesn’t even care.

Daniel’s made it fairly clear to anyone who will listen – he doesn’t want anything to do with this kind of legacy.

It’s not often anyone listens. Even Alex.

Alex, who shrugs on some boxers and pulls back the covers on his bed. He waves a remote control in the air, gesturing grandly towards the flat-screen on his nightstand. “Want to watch something?”

Daniel nods, mutely, and climbs under the comforter. Low, like a secret, he tells Alex, “I hate coming home.”

Alex touches his shoulder. Lightly. His fingers are hot, and pruned from the shower. Earnestly, he says, “I know. But I’m glad you’re here.”

It’s almost enough.

* * *

He kisses Alex on Alex’s twenty first birthday, a whiskey-slick slide of mouths that devolves into a collision of teeth and tongue. It lasts far longer than it should, goes on and on until Daniel thinks that they’re doing this, that this isn’t a betrayal.

That this is something he can actually have.

Then he’s being shoved backwards into the elegant brocade wallpaper of their sitting room.

Alex is wild-eyed, panting, rumpled in a way Daniel wants to explore. He rasps _why_ , the word clunky and rough.

Raw-throated and abruptly terrified, Daniel shrugs one shoulder. “We’re already fucked up in every other way. Why not this one?” 

“Daniel,” Alex says, and there’s something in the way his pale eyes darken that belies his fear, that’s more than a little bit wanting. “We can’t.”

Daniel’s heart drops into his stomach, an unpleasant swoop that makes him want to vomit.

“We can’t do this,” Alex continues. “We can’t be this. I can’t – I can’t be this, for you.”

“Okay,” he says, even though no part of this is.

There is not a single moment of Daniel Le Domas’s life that has ever been _okay_.

* * *

Alex won’t talk to him.

Alex will barely _look_ at him.

Somehow, in a handful of minutes, Daniel managed to destroy the only relationship that has ever meant anything to him. Poof. Presto. Utter annihilation.

And now he’s back home, a grad school dropout, sitting at the intricately carved, solid oak dining room table, listlessly spooning through a bowl of Cheerios.

He’s a ghost in his own house.

It’s par for the course, he supposes. The shitty, skeleton-filled, obstacle-ridden course.

“You should be grateful, you know.” Emilie flounces past him, plaid skirt fluttering as she snatches up an apple from the breakfast spread. “Mom’n Dad keep giving you second chances.”

“Is that what this is?” Daniel frowns down at his neatly pressed suit. “I thought it was indentured servitude.”

“You’re getting paid.” Emilie points out, wrinkling her nose.

“Yes, but.” Daniel pops his lips together, stressed at the entire idea of a nine to five job. _Especially_ this one. This the future he’s been dreading. “I don’t want to be there.”

“Boo hoo.” His little sister rolls her eyes and purses her lips, turning her dimples into deep gouges. “Suck it up, buttercup.”

“Great. Yeah. That’s good advice, Emilie,” Daniel tells her, dripping disdain, but he might as well be sassing off the brocade walls. Emilie’s already skipping off to school.

Or to skip school. Who knows, with that girl?

Daniel stirs his Cheerios into a whirlwind, watching them dip underneath tiny waves of milk. He hums a pop song under his breath and wonders if it’s too early to add some cognac to his coffee.

Anything to avoid his first day behind the helm of the family dynasty.

But he doesn’t get a chance to head for the bar cart. His mother bustles in with a copy of the Wall Street Journal, her black silk dressing gown clinging in all the places Daniel wishes it wouldn’t.

He groans and slides lower in his chair.

She raises one perfectly arched eyebrow. “Excited for your first day?”

“Psyched,” Daniel mumbles.

“Well.” Delicately, his mother lays the paper next to her place setting. “Your father has already left for the morning. You’ll have to catch a ride with Alex.”

That sounds…unpleasant. “I can drive myself.”

“Emilie took your car.”

“What?” Daniel splutters. “That’s impossible. I’ve got my-“

He pats the pockets of his slacks, only to find them empty.

That little pickpocket.

“She took my keys! Why did she – What happened to her car?”

His mother sighs, extremely put upon. Which, fair. Emilie and Daniel both keep her on her toes. “I believe it’s in the shop.”

“Did she need an oil change that badly?” Daniel demands, outraged and trying his best not to sound it. He’s still trying to figure out when Emilie grabbed his keys, and whether she’ll teach him how to be so fucking sneaky.

His mom presses two fingers to the bridge of her nose. “She needs a new fender.”

Daniel waits for an explanation.

Reluctantly, his mother adds, “She crashed it. The car. Into our mailbox.”

Emilie is an actual menace. Daniel would laugh if he wasn’t so worried about his paint job. “Isn’t that the fourth one this year?”

“Fifth.”

Boarding school looms in somebody’s future.

Daniel chokes down the comment, choosing instead to say, “I’ll take the Rolls.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“We have an entire garage full of cars, mom. No one will miss it.”

“Your brother needs to go to the office anyway.”

“Why?” Daniel scoffs. “Does he need to pick up a board game?”

Crossing her arms, his mother gives him the look that says he needs to shut up and do what she says. Great.

“Sure, fine. I’ll go with Alex.”

Daniel figures he’ll grab the keys to the Roll on his way out the door, because what Becky Le Domas doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

Only, his plan is foiled by Alex himself, who is waiting by the front steps of their house. He’s rigid, unhappy. Like he wants to be somewhere entirely different.

“You don’t have to drive me,” Daniel tells him. “I’m a goddamned adult.”

Alex cuts his eyes heavenward. “Get in the car.”

Daniel does what he’s told.

The ride is every bit as uncomfortable as he expected, and because Daniel is Daniel, he can’t help but make it worse. Ten minutes into the commute, he blurts out, “I guess I should tell you I’m sorry I kissed you.”

Alex winces. “Can we not talk about that?”

“Absolutely. We should probably just keep not talking at all, right? That’s been going super well for us.”

“ _Daniel_.”

“Alexander,” Daniel replies, impatiently, drumming his fingers against his knees. “Is this it then? We’re gonna be Awkward Silence Brothers for the rest of our lives?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Um. Anything? Anything would probably help.”

“Okay, fine.” Alex squares his shoulders, fingers flexing against the steering wheel. “Why’d you do it?”

“Why did I…?”

“Why did you kiss me, you fuckhead? Why did you have to – ruin everything? Do you hate me that much?”

“Is that what you think?” Taken aback, Daniel leans against the headrest. Through the moonroof, the sky is a perfect, summer blue imitation of Alex’s eyes. He shuts his own, struggling to inhale. Exhale. Inhale. “Sure. I hate you. Why not? I hate this family, so it makes sense that I’d hate you too.”

Alex frowns. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not true. You know it’s not true.”

“You’re the one who asked.”

“Not so you could patronize me.” There’s a hurt edge to Alex’s words, a wrecked quality that makes Daniel want to hug him. “Tell me the truth.”

The truth. What a novelty.

“I don’t know why I kissed you.” Daniel pushes a hand through his dark curls. He scowls out the window, at the neatly tended rows of trees slowly being overtaken by buildings. They’re almost there. “I wanted to. That’s all.”

“You wanted to…?”

“Yes, Alex.” The defensive lilt of Daniel’s voice changes, betrays him. He suddenly sounds as bone tired as he always feels. “Sometimes, I see you, and I want…”

He doesn’t know how to express all the things he wants.

In truth, because of who he is, _what he is_ …Daniel’s not sure he should allow himself to want things.

He doesn’t deserve happiness.

No one who’s done the things he’s done could.

But as Alex pulls into the parking lot of the company their family built, he shifts the car into park. He flicks the dangling keys with his forefinger, a defeated gesture, and admits, “Sometimes…sometimes I want it too.”

Daniel stares at him.

He doesn’t understand how they got so fucked up, so twisted inside.

Then again, he understands perfectly.

He tells Alex, “I won’t do it again.”

Hesitantly, Alex reaches for him. He touches the curve of Daniel’s lips, and for one long, drawn out moment, Daniel doesn’t think he can breathe.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Alex drops his hand.

“Alright. We won’t do it again.”

That’s not quite what Daniel said. 

He thinks about that a lot, later.

* * *

In the fall, Alex goes heads back to university. 

Daniel meets Charity not long after.

When she asks if they’ll ever get married, much too soon and with obvious motives, he tells her to pick a date.

* * *

Daniel never sees much of Alex, after his wedding.

Golden boy begins to travel. He finds reasons not to be home.

The space between his visits stretches, lengthens. Soon enough he’s only back for Emilie’s wedding, for the birth of her boys. For their mom’s birthday. Then for nothing at all.

One day, Daniel looks up and realizes – it’s been years since he saw his brother in the flesh.

He can’t blame Alex for that.

There’s too much to reckon with, at the good old Le Domas homestead. The games, the goat shed. Daniel.

Alex is smart to get out while he can. Maybe he’s finally realized what Daniel has tried to tell him all along – their family is cursed.

But then.

Then.

The prodigal son returns.

He is such a fucking idiot.

* * *

Grace epitomizes her namesake.

She sweeps into Alex’s life and knocks his socks off, pulls him under her spell in a way Daniel could tell them is a Bad Idea.

But no one asks Daniel anything anymore. Not even Alex, who hadn’t bothered to tell him about Grace until they were all sitting at a Michelin starred restaurant, a few weeks before their nuptials, toasting their engagement.

And Daniel _likes_ her. She’s got a foul mouth and a taste for whiskey. She makes a few dirty jokes that make Becky and Tony visibly wince, but get a chuckle of Daniel and Alex, at least. She’s pretty, and smart, and she can do so much better than the Le Domas tribe.

Daniel tries to dissuade her. Kind of. He tries flirting, like a creep.

Charity doesn’t mind – they don’t have a prenup – and Alex barely notices he’s there.

Talking about it probably would have worked better.

Grace spends the next week avoiding him. At the very least, Daniel hopes that the complete lack of subtlety will make her think about what kind of a family she’s marrying into.

Between his problematic pick up lines and the ice king and queen that are Daniel’s parents, surely, Grace will get the hint and hightail it away.

It’s a no go.

Grace and Alex are, despite the odds, in love.

Which makes it worse, somehow. Daniel’s never been in love. Daniel’s never let himself feel anything, for anyone.

Except Alex.

He thinks this will all end badly, but for his brother’s sake, he hopes that’s not true.

* * *

The night before the wedding, Daniel has nightmares.

Worse than normal, filled with blood-soaked terrors and eldritch horrors.

Charity shoves him out of bed, butt-naked and screaming. Daniel tries to calm down, grabs an old quilt and curls up on a chaise lounge in the living room. He plans to stay awake until morning, but he’s too drunk, too gone. He can’t keep the darkness out.

Pale, twisted shapes haunt his dreams, beckoning, beckoning.

And when he wakes up the morning of the ceremony, he has to down four fingers of bourbon before his hands will stop shaking.

* * *

Of course, the dreams are prophetic.

It all goes to hell in handbasket, from there.

* * *

Daniel’s never tried to be a hero before. He’s never tried to be the good guy, and it’s been a long time since he’s made any good choices. Much less any worthwhile ones.

Only this, saving Grace? Might be the first time in years that he’s felt like his soul might be his and his alone. Even as he chokes on his own blood.

That’s always been his fate, right? His destiny? _Blood_.

Providence and the hot, copper metal taste in his mouth – that’s all he can focus on when Alex falls to his knees next to Daniel. When he begs Daniel to look at him.

When he kisses him.

The last thing Daniel sees is Alex’s mouth, red with his blood. Alex’s eyes, brimming with tears. Alex, dragging his wrist across the plush of his lips, wiping away tears and the taste of Daniel.

Alex begs him not to go, tells Daniel in broken sobs that he needs him.

But at that point, Daniel can no longer hear him.


End file.
